verb (used without object)
- to be sparing or frugal; economize (often followed by on): They scrimped and saved for everything they have. He spends most of his money on clothes, and scrimps on food.
verb (used with object)
- to be sparing or restrictive of or in; limit severely: to scrimp food.
- to keep on short allowance; provide sparingly for: to scrimp their elderly parents.
verb
- (when intr, sometimes foll by on) to be very economical or sparing in the use (of) (esp in the phrase scrimp and save)
- (tr) to treat meanlyhe is scrimping his children
- (tr) to cut too small
adjective
- a less common word for scant
v.“to make too small,” 1774, originally in English an adjective, “scant, meager” (1718), possibly from a Scandinavian source (cf. Swedish skrumpna “to shrink, shrivel up,” Danish skrumpen “shrunken, shriveled”), or from a continental Germanic source akin to Middle High German schrimpfen, German schrumpfen “to shrivel,” from Proto-Germanic *skrimp-, from PIE root *(s)kerb- “to turn, bend.” Related: Scrimped; scrimping.